Insights into lifeworlds

What doe the lives of women look like who have made Linz their new home, also in regard to those among them who feel they are still strangers in their new home? Why are families and clubs in Auwiesen and Kleinmünchen particularly hospitable towards strangers? Under the title “Einblicke in Lebenswelten” [Insights into lifeworlds] Kepler Salon presents two Linz09 programmes.

Twelve women from a migrant background working as “culture guides” will be offering tours through Linz Mitte and their own specific lifeworlds. Conceived by the BFI OÖ in cooperation with the AMS OÖ, this project offers Linzers and visitors the possibility of direct encounters with people, their circumstances, origins and biographical facts in the form of unconventional city tours. The reasons that made them leave their countries of origin in the first place, their arrival in the everyday life of a different culture, the barriers they are struggling to overcome, their eventual acceptance by the host society add up to a view from the inside of the worlds migrants live in, of their individual experience – and of culture that recreates itself in an ongoing process.

“One day and one night in a suburb” is one of altogether eleven programmes of the Linz09 project “Capital of Culture Neighbourhood of the Month” (www.linz09.at/kulturhauptstadtteil). In March 2009 indiviudal hosts, host families and local institutions will be providing visitors with accommodation and hospitality for one day and one night – for free. The project team is in charge of selecting the hosts and guests register at the website www.quiripedia.at. In this way both Linzers and visitors get to know what’s so special about this southern neighbour¬hood of Linz and its inhabitants.